Tag Archives: Nikki Nice

Susan and Hank Binkowski, owners of Uptown Grocery and Buy For Less grocery stores, closed the Smart Saver store at NE 23rd Street and Martin Luther King Avenue in August, but announced their intention to reopen the store as an Uptown Grocery Market by the end of 2019.

Though Oklahoma City has created a Citizens Advisory Board to oversee each of the three previous MAPS initiatives over the last 25 years, on Tuesday the ordinance to create a board for MAPS 4 passed only after some council members voiced how they felt their views were overlooked throughout the current process.

Oklahoma City Council members who voted to allow construction of a 70-foot office building in a mostly residential area “were not good neighbors” to constituents who protested the measure at Tuesday’s meeting, said Councilwoman Nikki Nice, Ward 7.

The moratorium on small-box discount stores in northeast Oklahoma City has been extended to last through the holidays, but for now has not been expanded to include other sources of unhealthy foods that might compete with a grocery store.

When the moratorium on new discount or convenience stores is over, the next step is to create a Healthy Neighborhood Overlay District, with the ultimate goal of bringing an adequate grocery store with fresh meat and produce to the city's northeast side.

Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma, said the cultural problem of lack of diversity is more likely to crumble at the municipal level first, and Oklahoma City has always been slightly more diverse than the rest of the state.